Brian M Downing
A nation’s history, beliefs, traditions, and family lore are forged in wars and become its ordering principles. Britain became a dominant power through the Napoleonic Wars and colonial conflicts. The US was decisively changed by World War Two and later by Vietnam.
World War Two, the Great Patriotic War as it’s reverently known, shaped Russia for decades. It made the nation (the Soviet Union then) a world power. It was an intoxicating experience after years of hardship. Victory brought power, glory, and legitimacy.
Stalin and his successors made the most of it. The WW2 order kept them in power and the public content well after 1945. It swiftly collapsed in 1991. Longstanding institutions and beliefs were gone. The downfall horrified at least one KGB officer.
Putin determined to rebuild the WW2 order and restore Russian imperial greatness. His justification, conduct, and goal of the Ukraine war draw from the past. He aims to bring back the power, glory, and legitimacy of the Great Patriotic War.
The fall
Many Russians welcomed the demise of the WW2 order, at least initially. A decrepit system was finally gone, opening a path to political and economic liberalization – the hope of urban middle-classes for over a century. A sizable majority realized the WW2-order, the only one they’d lived under, had been a source of pride and security, and were dismayed when the hammer and sickle came down from the Kremlin.
After thirty-five years of regimentation and mobilization in the Cold War, the state was in disarray, the army in a shambles, the economy in free fall. A strange, inexplicable defeat had taken place. No battles had been lost, no foreign army marched into Moscow, and no swords had changed hands. Yet respect for Russia was gone. Eastern Europe switched sides.
Uncertainty, confusion, and anomie pervaded. Alcoholism, decadence, and Western influences were all about. Veterans had to sell their medals to make ends meet. Without authoritative leadership and dominant norms, life no longer made sense. Free markets or centralized authorities? Democracy or autocracy? Did the old order fall on its own or was it brought down by dark forces?
The restoration
Putin became president in 2000. He took immediate steps to marginalize democratic institutions and use oil revenue and to restore the military as a unifying symbol of Russian power. Hitler did the same in the 1930s. The Reichswehr became his Wehrmacht. It entered the Rhineland and Sudetenland, then Poland and France.
Initially, Putin used the army for stirring parades, but then to seize parts of Georgia and later Ukraine’s Crimea and eastern regions. It played well. Russia was powerful and respected again. Western political ideas were put in the dustbin of history. Uncertainty, confusion, and anomie were replaced by power, war, and expansion.
Putin’s grand vision – for himself and Russia – needs more than what’s conferred by a few slices of land. He wants to place himself alongside Joseph Stalin. He defeated the Third Reich, subjugated Eastern Europe, and made Russia feared and respected. The Great Patriotic War was, in Putin’s estimation, the apogee of Russian history. Bringing Russia back to that apogee is an appealing, historically-mandated goal for him.
©2022 Brian M Downing
Brian M Downing is a national security analyst who’s written for outlets across the political spectrum. He studied at Georgetown University and the University of Chicago, and did post-graduate work at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs. Thanks as ever to fellow Hoya Susan Ganosellis.